It may appear that there is considerable difficulty in establishing oneself in a house in London, and that is, no doubt, the fact; but it is only after the householder has begun to settle down, and more especially after his name has appeared in the directory, that his real troubles begin. […].

Unless under very exceptional circumstances it is unwise to employ peripatetic chair-menders, knife-grinders, tinkers, or the like. A very favourite trick of the “needy knife-grinder” is to undertake the sharpening of scissors for a stated sum, and then having unscrewed them, to decline to put them together except at a greatly increased charge.

[In May 2012 a piece of street art by the artist Banksy appeared on the wall of the Poundland store in Whymark Avenue in Haringey, North London. The piece depicted a boy crouched over a sewing machine producing Union Jack bunting and, positioned as it was, on the route of the Olympic flame in the year of the Queen’s Jubilee it provoked more than the usual discussion expected of such art, not just in the local community but in the worlds media.

In February 2013 the work was removed from the wall by the building’s owners and put up for sale, by auction, in the U.S., an act that caused a second spike of interest in the Turnpike Lane area. The wall was subsequently rerendered and repainted only for the new piece of street art in the photograph above to appear where the Banksy once was. R.D.]